Snap Happy

Beep beep. My phone: Cameron Luby added one new photo to the album ‘Emma’s first month’ in Google Photos.

That’s right, I just became an aunt! It’s so exciting. Her name is Emma and –

Beep beep. My phone: Cameron Luby added five new photos to the album ‘Emma’s first month’ in Google Photos.

Sorry. Such cute photos! Anyway, my brother lives in San Francisco so I haven’t met Emma yet but with technology these days I really feel like I’m right there with –

Beep beep. My phone: Cameron Luby added 17 new photos and four videos to the album ‘Emma’s first month’ in Google Photos.

Let me just put that on silent.

Last week I went to visit my Nana and she told me a story. When she was about 10-years-old a man came to her family home one day and offered to take a photo of her and her siblings for 5 pounds (a whole week’s wage for her father). Having never had a photo taken of their children, my great-grandparents couldn’t pass up such an opportunity so they agreed on a payment plan and went ahead with it.

The man then came back two weeks later and gave them a framed photo, expertly painted with realistic colour, and my Nana still has it hanging on her wall. It’s beautiful and she treasures it. It’s the only photo she has of herself at that age and it’s the only copy of it.

My niece, Emma, is three weeks old and her Google Photos album contains more than 500 photos and tens of videos including montages with musical accompaniment.

How times have changed.

Don’t get me wrong – I love seeing photos of my new baby niece. It’s incredible how much I can feel a part of her first few weeks in this world from another country. Everyone’s saying she looks like me and I would know because I’ve seen her from every single angle.

I haven’t met her yet and I already know the sound of her cries, her gurgles. I know what she wears to bed, how she holds her favourite toys, the face she makes when she needs to expels some kind of bodily fluid.

My Nana, the same one, is really savvy with technology and is linked in to the album as well. She jokes that Emma is going to be able to sue for breech of privacy as soon as she can form a sentence – and that’s not just a comment on the American legal system.

You do have to wonder how Emma’s going to feel about all of this. Certainly she won’t treasure these photos of herself in the way my Nana does the one of herself. If her own children ask, ‘Mum, what were you like as a baby?’ she can say, ‘Oh, just jump on Google darling.’

So, what’s it all about?

Well, perhaps these pictures, these albums, aren’t designed for future use like photos traditionally are. They’re not necessarily meant to be printed off and pored over one by one for years to come, or even hung on the wall. Because when you take 500 pictures of a baby on your phone, very few of them are going to be photo frame material (think blurry potato in a beanie).

No, these photos are mostly about now. They're about connecting, sharing every moment, and helping family feel like they’re right there with you when they can’t be.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

But I’m sure my brother will forgive me for keeping my phone on silent. At least while I’m trying to write my column.